ally kills. Now, in accordance with us, everything
would have been done legally; and I'm afraid that if your grandfather
were living among us, he would have to be deposited like the rest."

"Not if Sir Ferdinando were there," said the boy. I could not go on
to explain to him that he thus ran away from his old argument about
the duke. But I did feel that a new difficulty would arise from the
extreme veneration paid to certain characters. In England how would
it be with the Royal Family? Would it be necessary to exempt them
down to the extremest cousins; and if so, how large a body of cousins
would be generated! I feared that the Fixed Period could only be good
for a republic in which there were no classes violently distinguished
from their inferior brethren. If so, it might be well that I should
go to the United States, and there begin to teach my doctrine.
No other republic would be strong enough to stand against those
hydra-headed prejudices with which the ignorance of the world at
large is fortified. "I don't believe," continued the boy, bringing
the conversation to an end, "that all the men in this ship could take
my grandfather and kill him in cold blood."

I was somewhat annoyed, on my way to England, by finding that the men
on board,--the sailors, the stokers, and stewards,--regarded me as
a most cruel person. The prejudices of people of this class are so
strong as to be absolutely invincible. It is necessary that a new
race should come up before the prejudices are eradicated. They were
civil enough in their demeanour to me personally, but they had all
been taught that I was devoted to the slaughter of old men; and
they regarded me with all that horror which the modern nations have
entertained for cannibalism. I heard a whisper one day between two of
the stewards. "He'd have killed that old fellow that came on board as
sure as eggs if we hadn't got there just in time to prevent him."

"Not with his own hands," said a listening junior.

"Yes; with his own hands. That was just the thing. He wouldn't allow
it to be done by anybody else." It was thus that they regarded the
sacrifice that I had thought to make of my own feelings in regard
to Crasweller. I had no doubt suggested that I myself would use the
lancet in order to save him from any less friendly touch. I believed
afterwards, that when the time had come I should have found myself
incapacitated for the operation. The natural weakness incidental to
my feelin